Yahoo News “Life Will Win”: How Ukraine’s Film Industry is Reinventing Itself During the War
There’s been no shortage of moral support for the Ukrainian cause since Russia’s unprovoked invasion last year, and the country’s beleaguered screen industry has gotten a much-needed boost from foreign buyers. Ukrainian documentaries are doing brisk business as global audiences search for broader context on the conflict, while even narrative features that hit the festival circuit last year are finding a home with specialty distributors.
As the war drags into its second year, however, the Ukrainian industry is at an inflection point. Russia’s relentless attacks on critical infrastructure continue to wreak havoc on the country’s power grid and force film crews to work under constant threat. The theatrical market has collapsed, broadcasters and streaming platforms are virtually bankrupt, and public money that might have once bolstered film and TV production is being diverted to the war effort instead.
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There is an awareness, too, among Ukrainian filmmakers that buyer fatigue will eventually set in. “We understand that people cannot 100%, all the time have this war in focus,” says Igor Storchak, founder of Gingers Media and co-founder of the Organization of Ukrainian Producers. “The world becomes tired of the war. We understand this. It’s a natural process. This will be the big question: What will happen next with the Ukrainian industry?”
This week, the Berlin Film Festival and European Film Market take place for the first time since Russia launched its full-scale invasion last February. The Ukrainian presence will be strong across the board, with several films in the official selection, including Vitaly Mansky and Yevhen Titarenko’s war documentary “Eastern Front” (pictured, top), playing in the competitive Encounters strand, Alisa Kovalenko teen-focused doc “We Will Not Fade Away” screening in Generation and Tonia Noyabrova’s narrative feature “Do You Love Me?” in Panorama.
Meanwhile, the Sean Penn and Aaron Kaufman-directed documentary about Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, “Superpower,” promises to be one of the festival’s most talked-about titles, while Zelenskyy himself will appear via livestream during the opening ceremony on Thursday.
A host of EFM initiatives, meanwhile, will offer a platform for Ukrainian producers bringing new projects to the first full-scale Berlin market since before the pandemic. Production of narrative feature films and scripted drama series in Ukraine has only begun to pick up again, after nearly eight months of what SPACE Production co-founder Kateryna Laskari describes as a “creative blackout.”
The Kyiv-based outfit resumed production last December on its hit primetime detective procedural “The Trace” and docudrama series “The Blind,” even as air-raid sirens wailed over the Ukrainian capital and Russian missile strikes knocked out the power supply, forcing the company to relocate to new premises with a bomb shelter and generator.
The company is soldiering on. “We are not scared anymore,” says Laskari, who’s developing a diverse slate of narrative features to illustrate that Ukrainian filmmakers “don’t want to talk only about war.” Among the titles SPACE Production is developing are the pan-European road movie “Music Under the Bombs,” as well as the Italy-set, feel-good film “The Flash.”
Such offerings are a reminder that the Ukrainian industry produced a range of content across genres before the war — President Zelenskyy was once best-known as a romantic-comedy leading man — and it will continue to do so once peace is finally achieved.
It’s a strategy that makes good business sense as Ukrainian filmmakers make their pitch to buyers. “Our partners are looking for content they can monetize,” says Evgeniy Drachov, CEO of Film.UA Distribution, whose animated feature “Mavka. The Forest Song” — completed after the team at Animagrad Studio had scattered across the continent — has sold across most of Europe and will be released theatrically in the U.S. and Canada by Shout! Factory this year.
As members of the global film community arrive in Berlin on the eve of the war’s one-year anniversary, German broadcasters are lining up timely, hard-hitting documentaries to commemorate that grim milestone. “Against All Odds: The Failure of Russia’s Blitzkrieg,” a documentary about the war’s first month that was recently acquired by Beta Film’s documentary label Autentic, will air on N-TV on Feb. 20, two days before ARTE airs “Art of War: Ukrainian Culture in Resistance,” a film that examines how artists use their craft as a tool of resistance.
Mirjam Strasser, Autentic’s head of sales and acquisitions, doesn’t expect interest in even war-related content to wane anytime soon. “If the film is special, and has a unique selling point, it will still sell,” she says.
“Everyone is still looking for other voices and other angles,” agrees Stefan Kloos, of documentary specialist Rise and Shine, which is repping world rights for Roman Liubyi’s “Iron Butterflies,” about the aftermath of the Russian downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 in 2014, which premiered at Sundance and will have its European premiere in Berlin.
Even as Ukrainian filmmakers deal with weighty subject matter, buyers respond when a film strikes the right note. “Klondike,” Maryna Er Gorbach’s 2022 Sundance prize winner, is a blistering, anti-war polemic set against the backdrop of the brutal Donbas conflict in Eastern Ukraine. The film has sold across Europe for Berlin-based ArtHood Entertainment and will be released theatrically in the U.S. by Samuel Goldwyn Films.
Premiering one month before the Russian invasion, “Klondike” was a timely arrival on the festival circuit. Yet the movie delivers a powerful, hopeful message above all that has helped it resonate with both buyers and audiences, according to Er Gorbach. “It’s a tough movie,” she said, “but it’s [based on] a very naïve idea: that life will win.”
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